YEREVAN. – I believe his visit was not pre-election, but was connected with the changes in Syunik, which he has not yet managed to make in favor of Azerbaijan. Vazgen Manukyan, the candidate for the post of Prime Minister of the opposition Homeland Salvation Movement of Armenia, told this to reporters, referring to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's visit to Syunik Province.

"He [Pashinyan] was scaring the people with the war. I have the impression that he did not stop the [recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war; he gave a lot of casualties so that the people would be afraid of the war. He frightens with war the people who in the first days of the war stood in line at the military commissariats to go to the front. He must be driven away by all means. I have said that if the capturing of Artsakh was a matter of prestige for Azerbaijan, then Syunik is a strategic task for it. Syunik worries our neighbors, Iran, China more than the Artsakh issue. I have not seen any benefit in his almost three years of rule to bring Armenia, but only to Azerbaijan," Manukyan said.

In response to the question about the reports on the arrests of Syunik community leaders, Manukyan said that welcoming Pashinyan in that way is the natural anger of the people, not an organized action. "If he tries to arrest people, he will get the answer in Yerevan," added Manukyan.

Comparing the state with a military tank, Manukyan said that by putting a very weak person at the helm of the tank, he is destroying the country, not defending it. "I would not have imagined that such a person could be a leader in Armenia, or in any country. We [Armenians] have not had such a leader for millennia. A traitor is not replaced by elections, he is removed [from power] by force," Vazgen Manukyan added.